Did you know that the University of Massachusetts Boston has more than 700 veteran/active–duty–military students? This is one of the many interesting facts I learned at the Student Center Ice-Cream Social held on Monday, Sept. 24. 

Now we’ve all heard facts like this before, like how UMass Boston is a minority-majority school. But what is the school doing to make the campus a better place for the minorities which populate our classrooms? This is the purpose of our Multicultural Student Centers. There’s the Black Student Center, the Queer Student Center, the Veteran’s Center, the Women’s Center, Asian Student Center, and Casa Latinx Student Center. Even if you don’t know anything about these centers, they’re there, and now they’re taking an active role in raising awareness of their positions on campus. 

One recent campaign for awareness was the Student Center Ice-Cream Social. This was a fun little event in which a sizable number of students packed Ballroom 2 on the third floor of the Campus Center, to mingle about, passing by tables each of the five centers had set up. Although the promised ice-cream was eventually served, this was clearly not the focus of the event, as students were—in theory—required to speak to each of the center coordinators before receiving their desserts. This rule was at first enforced by a system giving each guest a printed card with the different center’s names, for the attendees to have marked by each center coordinator. The students would then need to present their fully marked cards to a threshold guardian before their ice-cream would be served. 

Though this may seem like a good enough system for ensuring that the event serves its proper purpose, the crowd soon grew to be so large as to make it near impossible for the event coordinators to actually check each person’s ice-cream credentials. Fortunately, it seemed as though most people were still going from table to table as much as they would like, and, even if each individual may not have gone through the space exactly as planned, the coordinators themselves certainly had no shortage of prospective members to speak to. 

All in all, the Student Center Ice-Cream Social was a positive, fun, little time. The center coordinators were all very friendly and eager to talk about the good work they are doing. These kinds of groups are easy to miss when you don’t go looking for them. Even if you feel as though you personally don’t belong to any of the Student Centers, it is always important to know what is going on on campus and these centers play a key role in many student’s lives. Unfortunately, this particular event has passed but there will always be more events like this in the future, so when you see something happening, consider attending.